The Pulse

Coconut: good fat or bad?

Mixed messages abound about coconut and health. Is it a fatty treat, to be eaten with care? Or a miracle food, as some websites claim?

Published 25/09/2008

[Image source: iStockphoto]

Much can be said about the pleasures of coconut. Certainly the cuisines of a large number of countries, from India to Indonesia, would be much the poorer without it. But would they be healthier?

Coconut is one of those foods that seems to ping-pong between the 'good food' and 'bad food' list, and if you're confused about this, don't worry  even the experts can't quite agree.

The confusion starts because of the differences between the use of coconut oil in cooking, and the use of coconut milk or coconut flesh. Both the American Heart Association and the National Heart Foundation recommend avoiding the use of coconut oil for cooking, but both their websites include recipes that contain coconut milk, albeit a reduced-fat version.

Despite the fuzzy perception that all things plant must be better for us, oil made from coconuts actually contains a whopping 85 to 90 per cent saturated fat. Saturated fats, usually the dominant type in animal foods, are generally regarded as the baddies when it comes to heart disease.

Even reduced-fat coconut milk contains about 10 grams of saturated fat per 100 grams, compared to about 2.3 grams per 100 ml in reduced-fat cow's milk.

There are a number of websites claiming that the saturated fats in coconut oil are different to the saturated fats we're told to avoid in animal products. They also claim that coconut will help you lose weight, prevent wrinkles, treat serious illness, and, well, change your life.

All saturated fats are not equal

It's true that saturated fats differ from each other chemically  depending on the number of carbon atoms they carry  and different foods have varying concentrations of the different saturated fatty acids. The saturated fat in coconut oil consists mainly of the lauric acid and myristic acid, with lesser amounts of palmitic acid, whereas chocolate and beef are dominated by palmitic acid.

There's no doubt that all the fatty acids in coconut oil raise cholesterol, but the more important question is what kind of cholesterol do they raise  is it the bad LDL cholesterol, or the good HDL cholesterol?

The research isn't entirely clear on this point, but it seems the fatty acids found in coconut oil do raise LDL  bad cholesterol  as do other saturated fats, like butter.

But coconut may also raise HDL cholesterol  good cholesterol  to some extent, though not as much as unsaturated fats (the good fats).

So it's fair to say if you suddenly swap your olive oil for coconut oil, it's not going to do your cholesterol levels any favours and in particular, your levels of bad cholesterol will go up.

Fats, foods and heart disease

What does this actually mean for health outcomes? It's not good news, as one study comparing the number of deaths from heart disease between residents of Singapore and Hong Kong found. The number of deaths was around three times higher in Singapore, and one of the factors that researchers blamed for this was higher consumption of coconut and palm oil in Singapore. (Like coconut oil, palm oil is high in saturated fats, but the two differ in their fatty acid make-up.)

Having said that, coconut oil is not the worst fat to use. A study by Dutch researchers, for example, found that consumption of fat rich in lauric acid, as coconut fat is, is still better for your cholesterol profile than fat high in trans-fatty acids  a form of unsaturated fat created during manufacturing of foods like biscuits and pastries, which are known to be even worse than saturated fats for your cholesterol profile.

But then there's a puzzle. Several studies have looked at the health of people whose diets are particularly high in coconut products  oil, flesh and milk  and found that when their whole diet is taken into consideration, coconut is actually a benign and possibly even helpful component.

Professor Mark Wahlqvist, director of the Asia Pacific Health and Nutrition Centre at Monash University, has been examining the health of people in West Sumatra for around 25 years. Coconut is a staple of West Sumatran cuisine, particularly among the people of the Minangkabau region, but lately its use has been declining as more convenient cooked foods have become readily available. At the same time, the rates of coronary heart disease have gone up.

The reason could be that while they do consume a lot of coconut product and use the oil extensively for cooking, the Minangkabau people use it in conjunction with high intake of fresh fruit, vegetables and fish. In fact, the use of coconut actually encouraged consumption of fish and vegetables, as anyone who enjoys a good Thai fish curry can well appreciate.

Professor Walhqvist's research also found that it wasn't the amount of fat  either saturated or unsaturated  in their diet that made the difference between a healthy or unhealthy heart, it was how much meat, eggs, sugar, carbohydrates and cholesterol. People with heart disease tended to eat more meat, eggs and sugar, and have higher intakes of protein and cholesterol, but they had lower intakes of soy products and carbohydrate such as rice and cereals. Most importantly, coconut consumption as flesh or milk was the same for both the healthy or unhealthy people.

This could explain why organisations such as the National Heart Foundation and American Heart Association include recipes containing coconut milk on their websites.

Chances are, if you're using coconut milk, you're going to be cooking something with plenty of fresh vegetables and perhaps some chicken, fish or tofu. If you use fat-reduced coconut milk, whatever saturated fats you get from the coconut will be balanced by all the benefits you get from the hefty dose of vegetables and other ingredients.

So while it's probably not a good idea to switch from olive oil to coconut oil, hang on to the fat-reduced coconut milk and use it to make a vegetable-laden Thai fish curry every once in a while.